Allentown Fair adds beer to grandstand shows

Grandstand show patrons will have to buy and drink at beer garden, not at their seats.

The Allentown Fair will offer a fenced-in beer garden at the edge of the grandstand… (MORNING CALL FILE PHOTO )

August 27, 2012|By John J. Moser, Of The Morning Call

For the first time in the Allentown Fair's modern history, patrons at some of its headline grandstand shows will be able to enjoy a beer during performances, officials said Monday.

Beer will be served at the new Grandstand Pub, a fenced-in bier garten on the western edge of the grandstand track, fair Marketing Director Bonnie Brosious said.

But thirsty concertgoers will have to finish their beer at the pub; they will not be able to take it to their seats or outside the grandstand.

The Grandstand Pub will begin serving suds at Tuesday night's show by 1980s rockers J. Geils Band and the Fixx. The fair, now in its 160th year, runs through Sept. 3.

The Grandstand Pub also will be open for the three country concerts Wednesday through Friday featuring headliners Blake Shelton, Jason Aldean and Luke Bryan, and The Band Perry. And it will open Monday for the traditional closing-night J&J Demolition Derby.

The bier garten, or beer garden, will be closed Saturday for the Fresh Beat Band and Sunday for Nickelodeon star Victoria Justice because they are family-oriented shows, Brosious said.

Beer will begin flowing when grandstand gates open, typically an hour and a half before a show begins.

Patrons will be able to drink in the bier garten during the opening acts and for 30 minutes into the headline show. After that, the fair will cut off alcohol sales to avoid foot traffic that would disturb other patrons. "It's not going to go on through the show," Brosious said.

Brosious said the fair wasn't able to announce beer sales until Monday because it only recently received state approval. However, the fair spent a year researching alcohol sales at other venues.

Brosious said the fair decided to add the bier garten in response to customer requests.

"It's just something to service our concert customers, who have been asking for it for years," she said.

She acknowledged that "certainly there is a financial advantage to your fair's bottom line in any kind of new product that you introduce as salable."

"Yes, that's certainly a consideration. But it's being done with real consideration for the customer and what we can do to satisfy them," she said.

One of this year's show — Aldean's — will give the fair its largest grandstand crowd in 17 years, with a likely 14,500-person sellout. Shelton will bring more than 8,000 people to the grandstand.

Brosious said there were challenges in selling beer because the grandstand is more than 100 years old. It doesn't have a place where alcohol can be sold but easily kept separate from the concert-viewing area.

She said the fair decided to confine beer service to a small area to best police who is drinking and to prevent disruptions to patrons who aren't drinking. She said the state permit limits beer sales to a concessionaire. It cannot be sold from the aisles.

The fair's research uncovered other venues with similar alcohol-service areas. Brosious said the San Diego Fair, which has themed, closed alcohol-vending areas throughout its grounds, "kind of piqued our fancy."

Unlike other area events like Musikfest and Mayfair, fair officials have stepped lightly into allowing alcohol.

There are no records of alcohol being connected to the fair until 2004. That's when the fair agreed to allow the adjacent Main Gate nightclub and Fairgrounds Hotel to sell beer at a gated patio next to the fair's Music Tent, which offers free performances. While fairgoers can enter the patio from the Music Tent, they must stay there to drink.

In recent years, the fair started letting concert patrons leave the grandstand during intermission to patronize that area then be readmitted, Brosious said.

That practice will likely continue as the grandstand bier garten, which measures 100 feet by 100 feet, is too small to accommodate huge crowds, she said.

The Allentown Fair's new bier garten will have beer on tap at $5 for a 16-ounce cup. The area also will have food stands, souvenirs and portable restrooms.

People will need to show proof of age to enter the bier garten. Exiting also will be strictly controlled to make sure alcohol is not carried into the grandstand area, she said. Because there will be entrances from both the grandstand and track areas, people also will need to show their tickets to be readmitted, Brosious said.

"You know that there's going to be issues you're going to learn," Brosious said. "It's all new; you have to walk before you run.

"It really becomes how it is managed. … We thought that if we got to this point [and decided it wouldn't work], we would discontinue it. But we felt if we can basically set up a bier garten that wouldn't interfere with the concerts, we would."